S&P maintains India ratings at 'BBB-', says outlook stable

NEW DELHI: Standard & Poor’s (S&P) on Friday kept its sovereign rating for India unchanged at 'BBB-', while keeping its outlook for the nation stable, sources told ETNow.

The move is likely to disappoint investors, who pushed the BSE barometer Sensex for the seventh consecutive trading session on Friday on hopes of another rating upgrade.

Moody’s last week had upgraded India’s sovereign ratings to Baa2 from its lowest investment grade Baa3, citing the Modi government’s wide-ranging programme of economic and institutional reforms.

S&P said India’s sizable fiscal deficit, low per capita income and high government debt detract from sovereign credit profile, adding that the fiscal gap was in line with expectations.

The global rating agency, however, expects the Indian economy to grow robustly over 2018-2020, ETNOW reported.

It said it has a favourable view of the reforms that the government has undertaken and lauded India’s fiscal consolidation drive.
S&P said its stable outlook for India reflects its sound external account position. It also suggests India’s GDP growth would remain strong over the next two to three years.

S&P’s current BBB- rating is just one grade above junk status. The Modi government continues to insist that the country has seen dramatic improvement in growth and macro-economic stability since it took power in 2014.

The government aims at bring down fiscal deficit to 3 per cent of GDP in FY19 from 3.2 per cent budgeted for the current financial year.

The government had in the past questioned the complex methodology used by the global rating agencies to assign sovereign ratings.

In the Economic Survey for 2016-17, the Chief Economic Adviser in a hard-hitting analysis suggested that if the per capita GDP is key to upgrading sovereign rating – as suggested by Standard & Poor’s while maintaining status quo on India’s rating in November, 2016 – then poorer countries might be provoked into saying, “Please don’t bother this year, come back to assess us after half-a-century.”

Full text: Why S&P retained India ratings at 'BBB-'